His Butler, Adrift
by BlueRaven 666
Summary: A oneshot set after chapter 65 of the manga. Sebastian is severely injured and fighting for his life while Ciel can do noting but look on and recover himself. Not one of my best summaries. PLEASE REVIEW!


His Butler, Adrift

Ciel drifted in and out of consciousness as the small lifeboat they were in rocked lazily from side to side. He was cold and his fingers were numb. How he had avoided having an asthma attack thus far was beyond him. Although the tailcoat Sebastian had given him to keep warm was still damp, it _did_ provide him with a certain amount of warmth and protection from the wind.

As his eyes started to flutter shut once more, Ciel felt the boat shift slightly. Something lightly nudged him, shaking him out of his drowsiness.

"Young Master. . . Please try to stay awake."

The voice talking to him was weak and raspy. It was just barely above a whisper

Ciel forced his eyes open and tried to adjust. It was daylight, but he was just as bitterly cold as he was that night. He tried to remember what had happened exactly that landed him here, and it wasn't until then that he noticed that the bottom of the boat—all of it—was covered in blood. The sticky maroon liquid slipped in between his fingers. It was cold.

His eyes instantly settled on Sebastian. He saw him sitting about three feet away from him. He was hunched over with a hand clasped over his mouth. The large gash in his chest still bled heavily, explaining the blood that soiled the bottom of the boat. He looked pale, and in the light of the morning sun, he looked as white as snow.

Now he remembered. The Reapers, the undead corpses, the sinking ship; everything he remembered.

"Sebastian?"

The butler's head turned slightly in his direction, his own eyes also struggling to stay open.

"Pay no mind to me, young master." He said, "Just try to stay wake. . ."

Within an uncertain amount of time, Ciel continued to drift in and out of consciousness until he heard shouting. It most certainly hadn't come from Sebastian, who had now grown so weak he was lying on his side on the floor of the lifeboat in a growing pool of his own blood. Ciel would have slid over to check if he were still alive if he weren't so cold and so tired.

Eventually the shouts turned into simple voices with distinguishable words.

"Look down there! They could be more survivors!"

"Are they even still alive?"

"The kid's breathing."

"What about that one?"

"I don't know. He looks like he could have been injured by the propeller, or something."

The weight of the boat shifted and a man with a great copper-colored beard scooped Ciel up in his arms while another with a light grey beard looked over Sebastian, simply shaking his head.

_'No. No, he's not dead!' _Ciel thought, trying to make them into actual words.

"The butler's not dead." The sailor said, "But he isn't in good shape. It looks like something ran him through the chest."

"He won't last long out her." The sailor holding Ciel remarked, "Brim him aboard, too. We'll see if there's a doctor who can at least patch that up."

And with that, exhaustion took hold of Ciel and the young teen fell into unconsciousness.

* * *

Ciel didn't know how long he slept. Hours? Days? He didn't know, but he assumed it'd been a while, judging from the stiffness of his limbs and torso as he shifted in bed. There were several layers of covers above him, soft and warm. It reminded him of his bed at home; back at the Phantomhive manor where Sebastian could make his tea and desserts.

Sebastian. . .

Ciel's eyes snapped open as he remembered once more what had happened before he fell asleep.

"Sebastian!"

There was no one in the room with him. His butler was nowhere in sight. His friends and family were nowhere to be seen. Both things lacking, making him worry all the more that he was the only one still alive. Although he didn't show it, he prayed with every fiber of his being it wasn't true.

Ciel wrapped the thickest blanket around himself and got up from his bed. His legs and feet were still cold, as was the rest of him, but he didn't feel nearly as bad as when he was on the lifeboat. He staggered to the door, determined to find his butler, even if he was no longer alive.

Before he could make it to the door, the door opened to reveal Snake and a pair of his slithering friends.

"Master Ciel! You're out of bed, says Emily."

So a few of the servants _did_ make it after all. He hoped one of those servants was Sebastian.

"I have to find Sebastian." Ciel rasped, trying to make his way past Snake and his pets.

"Black. . ." Snake said quietly, "Black's not doing so good."

"I know. But I'd like to see him. Take me to him."

He was too exhausted to say much more. Snake slipped one of the young earl's arms over his shoulder.

"Alright, says Oscar. We'll take you to him."

* * *

The lower levels of the ship where the servants were kept weren't nearly as pleasant as the quarters Ciel was accustomed to. There were no individual rooms, only beds lined up in rows side by side. There was hardly any space between the beds and there was no privacy.

Only now there was no one there, since all the servants were most likely with their own masters. Only one bed remained occupied in the far back of the room; a nurse—or doctor perhaps—standing near him. Ciel could tell it was Sebastian lying on the bed simply from the way his body formed a distinguishable shadow across the white, blank covers of the bed.

The butler's chest was wrapped in gauze. The bandages were fresh—recently changed—but a large blood stain where the gash sat sent a long, scarlet mark across the center of the crisp, white wrapping. His face, even in the deepest depths of unconsciousness, held a heavily pained expression.

He hated to admit it to himself, but Ciel actually felt sorry for Sebastian. For a moment, he hoped the injury would just kill him and end whatever suffering he was going through. Then again, Sebastian wasn't human. Ciel could only guess Sebastian was fighting to stay alive out of loyalty to his contract with him; and loyalty was something he had once assumed his demon butler knew nothing of.

Ciel rest a hand on the demon's gauze-bound chest. He wondered heavily if there was a heart that beat somewhere below his hand, and sure enough, there was an uneasy thumping from somewhere within Sebastian's chest. Every few, long seconds a breath would push up on his hand and then easy out of the demons slightly-parted mouth with a nearly-silent sigh.

"Remarkable, isn't it?"

The comment came from the nurse that stood nearby, watching them.

"He hasn't woken up since they brought you both aboard." She continued, "And yet . . . he's quite a fighter, considering the fact his injury hasn't killed him yet.

'Yet', so she still assumed that it would.

"He's the Phantomhive butler." Ciel stated plainly, "He does anything and everything expected of him. It comes as no surprise to me that he's made it this far with this sort of injury."

It was an utter lie. He had fully expected Sebastian to have died by now, whether he had been trying to save himself or not. Any ordinary person would have died. In truth, Ciel was just as surprised as the nurse, and anyone else who knew of Sebastian's current condition, that the butler was still alive.

The nurse shook her head, as if she were still trying to comprehend the fact that Sebastian was still alive, "He can't be human. I don't see any way that it's possible for his heart to beat. That's a fatal injury there."

Ciel suppressed a chuckle. Indeed his butler wasn't human; he knew that well. But no other human could understand what he could, so he made his responses as natural as he could; putting on a little show of his own.

"I beg your pardon?" he inquired in an offended tone, "Did you just say that my butler isn't human?"

"Forgive me for saying so, but do you have another logical explanation?"

"I've seen people with worse injuries; ordinary people injured so badly that people also gave up hope for them. Do you suppose those people were monsters or demons or another entity that was able to heal itself instantly? Something that _can't_ be human?" he looked to Sebastian with a faked, heavy-hearted look, "Besides, just look at him. He's pale, he's grown weaker since I last saw him, and he's still bleeding. I worry he'll never make it back to London, or land for that matter. At least let him live out whatever time he has left being human and not brought down by lowly insults."

The nurse nodded with an apologetic look on her face and left the room.

Snake and his pets had been looking on and had kept silent. One of his slithering friends slid off of Snake and onto Sebastian until it was coiled on his bandaged chest.

"Black's in bad shape, says Emily." Snake said, speaking for the reptile, as always, "All I can smell is blood."

"Young . . . Master . . ."

The voice came from Sebastian's weak and injured form. Ciel and Snake moved closer beside him.

Sebastian's eyes rolled and fluttered. He was too weak to open them much, but Ciel could still see the red color of his eyes as they attempted to focus on him.

"Sebastian?" Ciel uttered in a rater hushed tone, "It's nice to see you're still with us."

Sebastian uttered what couldn't be described as a sigh or a pained chuckle, "What kind of butler would I be if. . ."

He shuttered suddenly and winced at the intense pain of the wound in his chest. His breathing had already been labored, but with the added effort of simply talking, even at a hushed whisper, he was heaving for breath.

"Take it easy, Sebastian." Ciel urged, "You're still badly injured."

"Huh . . . is my young master . . . taking pity on me, now?"

"I think I told you earlier: I don't need the Phantomhive butler staying like this. You need to rest. Don't exhaust yourself by saying useless things."

Sebastian nodded weakly, "That . . . was quite the performance, young master."

"What do you mean?"

"The way you defended me . . . from that nurse. You really made sound like . . . like I was truly human."

Ciel shrugged, "What else was I supposed to say? The people here are so bothersome."

Sebastian gave another weak nod before the expressions on his face went black and his eyes slipped closed. His breaths, though raspy, became steady as his exhaustion pulled him into unconsciousness once more.

Ciel turned to Snake, who was retrieving Emily from her position on Sebastian's chest.

"Stay here and watch him. Inform me of his condition every few hours. If he gets better or worse, tell me immediately. That's an order."


End file.
